Saturday, April 01, 2006
Crash
Not long ago, I made a complaint that Rang De Basanti was drenched in hypocricy. Well, so is Crash. But, to give credit where it is due, it is at-least better made.
Funnily enough, I am working on a script idea myself that borders on a similar treatment, though of a slightly different theme. Now I know what are the places where I could possibly go wrong with it.
For those who are interested in Crash, I can suggest two other movies: Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia(1999), and Michael Haneke's Code Unknown(2000). The first is certainly the more famous of the two, and it is interesting because of its circularity and closure. Haneke's film on the other hand, while having a similar treatment, goes out of the way to avoid that closure.
Magnolia also has a musical climactic moment, which, much like it does in Crash, slows down the narration, making the contrivances even more obvious. Take for example your average Hitchcock film; the reason the contrivance is not very obvious is because of the pace of narration.
Yet another gripe againts Crash is that while it seems to be a film about 'reality' and politically senstive matters, much like Rang..., it is eventually a politically correct film with a very circular and closed narration.
There are also places where the melodrama is a bit too much (the locksmith's kid is NOT what I am talking about)
I saw this film a couple of nights ago. Last night I watched Kurosawa's Red Beard and I learnt something else. There is nothing wrong with melodrama, if handled well. 'Handling well' is a rather difficult thing, and somehow only a few filmmaking cultures can pull it off. Most European cinema plainly avoids it. Iranian cinema plays with it rather well. Surely enough both Indian cinema and American cinema abuse melodrama.
Comments to Crash
i liked crash despite the formulaic crashes between the characters.
magnolia on the other hand was brilliant, with a much better script than crash but it confused the heck out of me for most part. The drag at the end wasn't what i expected out of a film like that.
amoreos perros and 21 grams could be also classified as crash scripts. or ?
posted by 
Guru: I am not too sure if I'd go about making that kind of classification. Comparing narrative structures would be an interesting exercise, but once narratives are grouped and branded, the discussion gets into the same rut as genre discussions go.
Inarittu's narration is certainly non-linear, but I do not think that all non-linear, and hence currently novel styles can be clumped together.
Crash and Magnolia, and more so Code Unknown are more like vignettes in character. Like the good old Federico Fellini masterpieces. Vignette storytelling is like carefully selecting a set of Ammani quicktales, and telling them in a particular order in order to evoke a certain transition of moods. Get my drift? I'd love to study that a lot more, and more importantly in the film medium. It has already been done well in literature.
posted by 
Anand
why do you think that crash is filled with hypocricy? I'm curious to know
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